Breeding schedule

Okay, I'd like to see some opinions on a breeding schedule.

Here's my set up to provide a background: I have two English Lop does that are quite large and are 8 1/2 months old. I have one NZ/California doe that is about 5 1/2 months old. One English Lop doe had one unsuccessful kindle a few months ago and has not been breed since. The second has had one unsuccessful and one successful kindle. The successful kindle is now about 9 weeks old and I will probably harvest in about a weeks or so.

The buck is a Mini Lop. He's about a year and a half old. My thoughts are to harvest him and get a larger breed buck like a NZ. My reasoning is that the current kindle isn't as large as I'd like them to be at this stage. Haven't weight them. My thoughts are to start breeding larger stock overall.

I stopped breeding completely during this summer due to the heat. My thoughts are to start again right around the first of September which of course would put the kindles around the first of October. So one buck and three does. How would you breed them? Would you breed all at the same time? Would you breed maybe two of them and then the third a month later? How soon after they deliver would you rebreed?

Appreciate your thoughts.

For me it depend on grow out cages. If you have enough I would breed all my does at the same time. So if you got one with a big littler and need to foster some kits you will be able too.

Everyone will have a different answer depending on details of goals and set-up. We started breeding our does together because that was the prevailing advice. This year we bred every 2 weeks from late winter into spring, total of 6 litters. Then we just bred again for fall but we'll have processed all the grow-outs from the spring litters before the fall litters arrive. We had one failed breeding of a first time doe so had a 4 week gap between litters and then 2 litters kindled just a day apart. For us (raising for meat) it works better not to have more than a litter to process at a time. We've never fostered any kits. Even when we had does kindling at the same time, they each had plenty of kits of their own to feed. The one doe who wasn't a successful mother was culled after 2 poor performances--the others haven't needed to have kits fostered. Other folks clearly find fostering very helpful. Having litters a couple weeks apart works well for us. You might want to try a breeding schedule, see how it works for you, change it as needed for your situation. Then hope you'll let us know what you chose, and why and how it worked. Good luck!

I like the two weeks apart from each other. That would be much easier when it's time to dispatch and process as you mentioned. I'll give this a go and see how well it works. I'll keep in mind that one doe had a first kindle of two still borns and the other will be a first timer. But the third doe has had once successful kindle so far.